Suzanne Segal

Information and Excerpts taken from

Collision with the Infinite

In the Spring of 1982, Suzanne Segal, pregnant and 27, was
living in Paris and waiting for a bus to take her home from a
birthing class. As the bus approached, she took a place in line
with other commuters. Suddenly she felt her ears pop, and was at
once enclosed in a kind of bubble which cut her off from the rest
of the scene, and left her acting and moving in the most
mechanical way. She says,

"I lifted my right foot to step up into the bus
and collided head-on with an invisible force that entered my
awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite, blowing
the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges,
splitting me in two. In the gaping space that appeared, what I
had previously called 'me' was forcefully pushed out of its usual
location inside me into a new location that was approximately a
foot behind and to the left of my head. 'I' was now behind my
body looking out at the world without using the body's
eyes."

Walking home from that bus ride, she felt like a "cloud
of awareness" following the body. The cloud was a witness
located behind and to the left of the body and completely
separate from body, mind and emotions. The witness was constant
and so was the fear, the fear of complete physical dissolution.
The witnessing continued for several months, even during sleep,
and Segal had to endure the fear and the accompanying stress,
finding relief in long and frequent sleeps.

The 'benefit' of the presence of the witness was that it
retained some sense of the personal self, the 'me'. But after a
few months the witness disappeared, and with it all traces of a
personal self,of the 'me'.

"When the personal self disappears, there is no
one inside who can be located as being you. The body is only an
outline, empty of everything of which it had previously felt so
full."

Now there was no one who thought, felt or perceived, yet these
functions continued smoothly and nobody noticed anything strange.
Yet she struggled to understand who was living and why her body
carried on its functions.

"Life became one long, unbroken koan, forever
unsolvable, forever mysterious, completely out of reach of the
mind's capacity to comprehend."

With the witness gone and, also gone, all vestiges of a
familiar 'me', a heightened level of fear arose. She called it
terror. She knew a continuous shaking of the extremities and
constant and copious perspiration. Now sleep was not a blessed
drug, for there was no one to sleep. It brought no relief. She
could not identify anyone who gained rest by sleeping, just as
there was no one who was awake.

"What had vanished was the reference point of a
personal self that felt the feelings personally. Emptiness was
consistently co-present with all emotional or mental states, and
this co-presence precluded any personal quality from existing. No
thoughts, feelings, or actions arose for any personal purpose
anymore."

"The mind's hypervigilance was exhausting.
Because it was constantly engaged in rejecting the experience of
emptiness, there was very little attention available for anything
else. My life was filled with seeing no-self, and raising
questions about no-self. Even in sleep the emptiness of personal
identity continued unperturbed. No mental activity ever changed
the experience of no-self in any manner, and none of the attempts
to figure out, organize, or evaluate it ever brought back a sense
of an individual indentity."

Segal had sought out a variety therapists and teachers, and
worked with them, to no avail. (As an aside, I can't help myself
from telling you how humorous it was to catch her falling in love
and having an affair with almost every therapist. The manner in
which the book presents these romantic escapades is classically
wooden and so bad they're good. Stephen Bodian, one of her
editors, admits in the introduction to the book that he
encouraged Suzanne to include such facets of her story in order
to make it a more palatable read. What a pathetic decision, in my
opinion. As if people interested in experiences of no-self need
to hear details of her love life in order to keep their attention
captured. Still, there is nothing wrong with demonstrating the
challenges relationships posed; it's totally called for; I am
commenting on the way those challenges were described.)

Part 2

After ten years she began to explore the spiritual perspective
on the emptiness of the no-self. She found volumes of material in
Buddhism on anatta ( no-self) and shunyata (emptiness).
Now she learned that not only was her experience understood, it
was sought by those on the spiritual path.

Perhaps Segal's greatest the challenge the past ten years was
day-to-day functioning without a 'me'. "(personality)
functions floated in a vastness that referred to no one,"
she wrote. Buddhism, she found, explained this by describing the skandhas
or "aggregates" as personality functions which
remain when one is empty of the person or the 'me'. The five skandhas
include form, feelings, perceptions, thoughts and
consciousness. Their interaction creates the illusion of self.
They do not actually make up the self. There is not self. When
the truth of the skandhas is revealed, as suddenly
happened to Segal at the bus stop, it is seen that there is no
self, only the skandhas functioning as they function;
the truth is that they are empty, they don't constitute a self,
but their interaction creates the illusion of self.

Still, Segal could not find literary descriptions of the fear
she had been knowing for ten years. She maintains that the
language and assumptions that go into creating the notion of what
real spiritual experience is, is a closed system, and that one
who speaks of experiences beyond that closed system, is seen to
be navigating their way to enlightenment with the use of highly
questionable markers, of which one of them is fear.

"We have become convinced that the presence of
particular thoughts, feelings, or actions is the only way we can
really know if someone is enlightened. The checklist of
enlightened attributes is both lengthy and complex. Is this
really love, we ask, in the presence of a supposedly enlightened
being? Or bliss? Do they still have thoughts, we want to know,
since we have heard that a mind empty of thoughts is surely a
sign of spiritual advancement? And what is this? Is fear present?
Well, the presence of fear proves they couldn't possibly having a
true spiritual experience. In fact, however, the presence of fear
means only that fear is present, and nothing more."

Part 3

Learning further about the fear, Segal came upon Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi's assertion that the experience of cosmic
consciousness was often a horrible experience, throwing a person
into confusion and fear, and absolutely requiring the presence of
a guru to verify the state, so that the experiencer could gain
the proper perspective, accept it, settle into it, and allow
Grace to bring the next stage of growth.

Verification and perspective came from many such gurus. The
first solid verification came from Dr. Jean Klein, who told
Segal, "You must stop the part of the mind that constantly
keeps trying to look back at the experience... . Get that part
out of the way, then joy will come."

Segal had realized that that is what she had been doing for
ten years: looking within to her affective system (feelings,
thoughts, emotions, will) and, finding nothing but emptiness, her
reaction was fear. So as long as there was introspection or
self-reflection, or 'looking within', there was a meeting with
emptiness, which she had been conditioned to believe was a
'wrong' meeting point. For when one looks within one should find
feelings, states of mind, emotions, the drive to act, not the
absence of those, not emptiness.

Now Klein had verified her state as one of realization of the
true nature of existence.

Others she came upon in books or in person, offered the same
verification. She had correspondences with many.

(None by email, apparently. This was 1992, still the early
days of the Internet, though there were nondual resources
available on Usenet and a fledgling World Wide Web, and
knowledgeable people to talk to via email. However, the World
Wide Web didn't even begin to start to take-off until 1993.

By the way, folks, what if a Suzanne Segal entered an
email forum, describing to us all she has described, and, along
with her description she indicated she had a brain tumor. What
would yousay
to her? How wouldyouguide
her? Some people seem to attribute her experiences to a tumor for
which there is no proof she had at the time of her experience. So
how would you deal with the human being -- not the book review --
that came into your midst? I'm not saying I wouldn't drop the
ball, but how about you?) Anyway,
read on...

Christopher Titmuss, a teacher of Buddhist vipassana
meditation, assured her that she was not insane, but that
insanity is the absence of experiences such as hers, whose
absence leaves only the 'me' and the tragic consequences of
limitation on personal, societal and global scales. Titmuss told
Segal she need to be reassured of the spiritual significance of
her experiences, and that a calm acceptance of her experiences
would eventually quiet the thoughts and feelings giving rise to
fear. And out of that quieting will come the full and deep
understanding of the experience. She soon came to realize that
her experience was neither insane nor wrong, only ungraspable.

Reb Anderson, abbot of Green Gulch Zen Center in San
Francisco, helped her loosen a rigidity in the way her mind was
interpreting the experience. He helped her to see that the
experience of emptiness was bliss, but not relative bliss, rather
the bliss of emptiness knowing itself. He imparted the knowledge
that this absolute bliss cannot be known by the skandhas, thus
the loosening of rigidity in her mind.

Jack Kornfield, a vipassana teacher, and well-known speaker
and author Ram Dass, both offered words of support for the
experience, and reassurance, reminding Segal that time was
required in order to acclimate to the change in consciousness.

A.H. Almaas offered further support, recognizing her
experience as similar in some ways to what he had gone through
himself as part of an ongoing process. He assured her that the
experience was "definitely not pathological," and that
the fear and terror were common; also that she had done well
without the guidance of a guru, but that extraordinary
understanding is required to understand and transcend the
experience and that a guru provides that.

Of all she had met and read of, Ramana Maharshi she felt was
most clear, and she considered Ramana her spiritual father. Segal
excerpts a portion of his talks, and states generally that,
"He described my experience in such a direct and simple
fashion that it left absolutely no room for doubt about what I
was encountering." And also Segal says

"Reading more and more of Ramana's words led me
to an astounding passage. When asked by a disciple if it was
necessary to be associated with the wise (sat-sanga)
in order for the Self to be realized, Ramana answered:
'association with the unmanifest sat
or absolute existence (is required).... The sastras say that one
must serve (be associated with) the unmanifest sat
for twelve years in
order to attain Self-realization...but as very few can do that,
they have to take second best, which is association with the
manifest sat, that is,
the Guru.'"

What astounded her, of course, about the passage is that she
was closing in on the twelfth year of her experiencing of no-self
or the unmanifest sat.

Poonjaji, the well-known disciple of Ramana, validated Segal's
experience, saying, "You have become liberation (moksha)
of the realized sages."

Gangaji, another prominent teacher in the Ramana-Poonjaji
lineage, said, "This realization of the inherent emptiness
-- which is pure consciousness -- of all phenomena is true
fulfillment. In the face of conditioned existence, much fear can
be intitally felt. Ultimately , the fear is also revealed to be
only that same empty consciounsess."

Segal's correspondence and eventual meeting with Andrew Cohen
was fruitful.They spent several hours together talking about the
emptiness of personal self, and Cohen imparted to Segal, in that
time, the awareness that the emptiness "was full of
exquisite infinity." In the month that followed, that
awareness deepened and became her root awareness. Andrew Cohen
had expressed and conveyed a tremendous excitement toward Segal's
'condition', for she was uncommon not only in having the
experience of no-self, but in persisting to see it through to a
stable resolution. Cohen said, "Your openness and
receptivity is a sign of true humility, which alone makes all
things possible."

Part 4

Still, all the reassurance was yielding no joy, until an
abrupt transition saw a change in knowledge from 'There is no
personal self', to 'There is no other'. This occurred
while Segal was driving to see some friends when

"I suddenly became aware that I was driving
through myself. For years there had been no self at all, yet here
on this road, everything was myself, and I was driving through me
to arrive where I already was. In essence, I was going nowhere
because I was everywhere already. The infinite emptiness I new
myself to be was now apparent as the infinite
substance of everything I saw."

So the emptiness she had known as a state of consciousness now
became the vastness of all existence.

Soon afterward, while spending a weekend at a Buddhist retreat
center in northern California, a new awareness arose. It was a
fluidity of perception in which entities were perceived as the
vastness itself, and all was pervaded by calm. Also she now came
to know that she was the substance of the vastness. She knew this
not through the sense organs, but through the substance that 'she
was'. She describes this as a finger drawing in the sand, where
the substance of vastness is the finger, the drawing and the
sand.

And now she saw the fear for what it was. Previously she had
assigned meaning to the fear, viewing it as an indication of the
invalidity of the experience of no-self. Now she saw fear as fear
without meaning. Fear was no different than form, emptiness,
pain, enlightenment. Everything is made of the same substance as
vastness. Seeing this, knowing this, the grip of fear broke and
joy finally arose.

Part 5

The remainder of Collision with the Infinite is straight
nondual confession, so rather than summarize, I'll quote
selections.

"This life is now lived in a constant,
ever-present awareness of the infinite vastness that I am."

"The presence of any thoughts, feelings, or
actions is never interpreted to mean anything other than that
they are present."

"... no judgment about good or bad or right or
wrong ever arises; everything is simply what it is."

"Once the mind admitted to the parameters of its
own sphere and stopped pathologizing what lay outside it, the
non-personal, indescribably joyful flavor of the vastness
experiencing itself moved radically to the foreground
forever."

"...life as usual continues to unfold; everything
gets done, just as it did before the realization of the vastness
occurred. Since there has never been a personal doer in any case,
the realization of this truth does nothing to change how
functioning occurs."

"To live in the vastness of the naturally
occurring state is to bathe in the ocean of non-personal pleasure
and joy. This joy and pleasure, which belong to no one, are
unlike any joy or pleasure that appear to refer or belong to a
someone. The emptiness is so full, so total, so infinitely
blissful to itself."

"In no way...am I suggesting that practices
should not be done, only that there is no
practitioner who is the doer behind them.
This is true of every activity. ... Just because there is no
practitioner (and never has been)) does not mean that practice
will not take place. If it is obvious for a particular spiritual
practice to occur, then it will."

"In fact, there is no individual 'I' who can
figure out how to find the infinite again. More importantly,
where would the infinite go? I mean, we aren't talking about
something that could hide under the rug. If you could see things
as only and exactly what they are, you would see that the 'you'
that is seeing is the vastness itself."

"The 'character work' prescribed by
psychotherapy, as well as by some spiritual traditions, including
Zen Buddhism, leads to a similar trap created by not seeing
things to be simply what they are. A relaxation of being
naturally arises if one is not seduced into taking ideas to be
truth. This relaxation is antithetical to 'character work', with
its clear position about how we would be if our characters were
worked on. When we knock on the door of 'character work', we are
invited into the labyrinth of futurity. It is inherently
impossible to arrive at a goal that is predicated on an 'I' that
will get us there. Character work is based on the same erroneous
belief that there is an individual doer who runs the show of life
and can train itself to be a better 'I'.

"...I can no longer call what I do psychotherapy,
since it in no way adheres to any standard principles of
psychological theory or intervention. My goal for everyone is
freedom -- total freedom. I don't want them to change how they
feel, work through childhood trauma, or get symptoms to stop. I
want them to be free by seeing that things are just what they
are."

"Who distinguishes between the true and the false
(self)? And true and false for whom? Thoughts, feelings,
sensations, and energetic frequencies do not mean anything about
some imaginary someone; they simply are what they are."

"We are the vastness, and we contain everything
-- thoughts, emotions, sensations, preferences, fears, ideas,
even identifications. Nothing has to go anywhere. In any case,
where would it go?"

"The purpose of human life has been revealed. The
vastness created these human circuitries in order to have an
experience of itself out of itself that it couldn't have without
them. "

"The substance of the vastness is so directly
perceivable to itself in every moment that the circuitry at times
requires another adjustment phase to get used to more infinite
awareness. When asked who I am, the only answer possible is: I am
the infinite, the vastness that is the substance of all things. I
am no one and everyone, nothing and everything -- just as you
are."

Part 6

Suzanne Segal died of a brain tumor in 1997 at the age of 42.
Many have stated explicitly or implicitly that her experiences
were directly the result of cerebral trauma. In the spring of
1996, the present book had been completed and Suzanne was
offering her teachings to the public through weekly dialogues and
a training group for her fellow therapists.

Very soon thereafter, however, she began to experience bouts
of 'vastness expansion' in which the vastness would expand
greatly upon itself. These experiences sapped her life and energy
and brought great fear upon her once again. It brought also
doubt. She began to judge what she had been saying or claiming to
know. She thought her talk about the vastness was perhaps a
defence mechanism to protect her from feelings and childhood
abuse memories.

She had lost her connection to the vastness, had become
disoriented, experienced dizziness and a general decline in
health In February of 1997 she was diagnosed with a massive brain
tumor. She died on April 1.

In the Afterword, Stephian Bodian, her very close friend and
the one who encouraged Suzanne to write this book, says

"Suzanne's example speaks to us of the importance
of integration -- of the personal and the transpersonal, the
psychological and the spiritual -- and raises questions about the
relationship between dissociation -- in which parts of the psyche
split off from one another -- and genuine, abiding awakening. By
dying before this integration had occurred, Suzanne left each of
us with the koan of discovering it for ourselves."

Segal, had she lived and integrated her vastness 'body' with
the physical/emotional/mental/spiritual body, may have composed
something like that which Adi Da composed below. Segal could only
speak of the vastness; she had not yet made the return journey,
that Adi Da speaks of, back to the body, back to unenlighenment.

I understand the problem of not coming to psychological
integration, the unitive experience, in the way Bernadette Roberts clearly did. That is a
gap in Segal's growth. I am viewing integration from the Adi Da
dynamic of moving from the vastness back to the body. It's a
different kind of integration.

By dying too early, Segal apparently did not have the opportunity
to come back to her body, to reintegrate with the body she had
left. Adi Da achieved un-Enlightenment and considers that event
greater than any event that was "obviously spiritually
auspicious." In The Knee of Listening (New Standard Edition,
April 1992, pp. 533-534), Adi Da (using the name Sri Da Avabhasa)
said

"You have heard the descripions of Yogis and
other Spiritual figures that before Realization one tries to go
beyond the world to Realize God, and then after Realization one
comes down into the body just so far, down to the brain, down to
the throat maybe, down to the heart maybe, but typically not any
lower than the throat. I have until now invested My Self more
profoundly than just down to the throat or heart, but not down to
the bottoms of My Feet. I have remained a kind of shroud around
this body, deeply associated with it and with all the ordinary
human things, playing as a human being often in very ordinary
ways, but, in My Freedom somehow lifted off the floor, somehow
not committed to this sorrow and this mortality, expecting,
having come as deep as I had, to perhaps teach enough, embrace
enough, kiss enough, love enough to make the difference, as if
through a single body I could indulge in intimacy with everything
and everyone self-conscious.

"I have realized the futility of that
expectation, even the futility of not being able, through a
submission of my own, to utterly transform and liberate even
those I could embrace and know intimately. That frustration is
fully known by me now. Even the futility of liberating those most
intimate with me is known by me. The kiss is not enough, even for
those I know intimately, and I cannot know all intimately.

"In my profound frustration, this body died. I
left this body. The I suddenly found my self reintegrated with
it, but in a totally different disposition. And I achieved your
likeness exactly, thoroughly, to the bottoms of my feet, achieved
un-Enlightenment, achieved
human existence, achieved mortality,
achieved sorrow.

"To me this is a Grand Victory! I do not know how
to communicate to you the significance of it. ...To me, it seems
that through that will-less, effortless integration with
suffering, something about my Work is more profoundly
accomplished, something about it has become more auspicious, than
it has ever been. I have not dissociated from my Realization or
my Ultimate State. Rather, I have accomplished your state
completely, even more profoundly than you are sensitive to it..
Perhaps you have seen it in my face. I do not look like I did
last month, and I am never again going to look like that. Don't
you know?

"I have become this body, utterly. My mood is
different. My face is sad, although not without llumination. I
have become the body. Now I am the Murti, the Icon, and it is
full of the Divine Presence.

"The nature of my work at the present time and in
the future is mysterious to me. It is a certainty, it is obvious,
but on the other hand it has not taken the form of mind fully.
But you will signs of it. You all must progressively adapt to
something that has happened that even I cannot explain
altogether."

I get the sense that Segal required a return journey. It is as
though she went from the streets directly to the moon and needed
to come back and see what rockets and the journey through space
were all about.